Early Encounters with Mount Royal: Part One
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R IOTS :G AVAZZIANDTHEONETHATWASN ’ T $5 Quebec VOL 5, NO. 8 MAR-APR 2010 HeritageNews Montreal Mosaic Online snapshots of today’s urban anglos Tall Tales Surveys of historic Mount Royal and the Monteregian Hotspots The Gavazzi Riot Sectarian violence on the Haymarket, 1853 QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS eritageNews H DITOR E Editor’s Desk 3 ROD MACLEOD The Reasonable Revolution Rod MacLeod PRODUCTION DAN PINESE Timelines 5 PUBLISHER Montreal Mosaic : Snapshots of urban anglos Rita Legault THE QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE The Mosaic revisited Rod MacLeod HERITAGE NETWORK How to be a tile Tyler Wood 400-257 QUEEN STREET SHERBROOKE (LENNOXVILLE) Reviews QUEBEC Uncle Louis et al 8 J1M 1K7 Jewish Painters of Montreal Rod MacLeod PHONE The Truth about Tracey 10 1-877-964-0409 The Riot That Never Was Nick Fonda (819) 564-9595 FAX (819) 564-6872 Sectarian violence on the Haymarket 13 CORRESPONDENCE The Gavazzi riot of 1853 Robert N Wilkins [email protected] “A very conspicuous object” 18 WEBSITE The early history of Mount Royal, Part I Rod MacLeod WWW.QAHN.ORG Monteregian Hotspots 22 The other mountains, Part I Sandra Stock Quebec Family History Society 26 PRESIDENT KEVIN O’DONNELL Part IV: Online databases Robert Dunn EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR If you want to know who we are... 27 DWANE WILKIN MWOS’s Multicultural Mikado Rod MacLeod HERITAGE PORTAL COORDINATOR MATTHEW FARFAN OFFICE MANAGER Hindsight 29 KATHY TEASDALE A childhood in the Montreal West Operatic Society Janet Allingham Community Listings 31 Quebec Heritage Magazine is produced six times yearly by the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) with the support of The Department of Canadian Heritage and Quebec’s Ministere de la Culture et Cover image: “Gavazzi Riot, Haymarket Square, Montreal, 1853” (Anonymous). des Communications. QAHN is a McCord Museum, MP-0000.812.2 non-profit and non-partisan umbrella organization whose mission is to help advance knowledge of the history and culture of English-speaking society in Quebec. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. ISSN 17707-2670 2 MARCH-APRIL 2010 EDITOR’S DESK The Reasonable Revolution by Rod MacLeod alf a century ago this past New workforce, to the family. Control is no and not just because atheists have gotten Year’s Day, Quebec premier Paul longer the privilege of one gender, nor more vocal lately in their critique of reli- Sauvé earned his fifteen minutes of entrenched in one religious organization. gious movements and vice-versa. Most fame by collapsing while shaking The public face of Quebec half a century people tend to see “secular” as the oppo- hands with potential voters. His sudden death, after the Quiet Revolution is both male site of “religious” —which is correct but Hjust weeks after that of “Chef” Maurice Dup- and female and has many different shapes not in the sense that secular forces are lessis, put the nail in the coffin of La Grande and complexions. necessarily unaccommodating or even Noirceur and paved the way almost inevitably Now, all this is wonderful and we are hostile towards religion. In Christian tra- for the Quiet Revolution. Fifty years later, quite right to defend this situation against dition, the secular was “of the world” as Quebec society is so confident in its embrace its critics. But we must be clear in our opposed to of God or the spirit; priests of modern liberalism that it cheerfully oozes self own minds that we are this way because were “secular” because they worked in righteousness at the prospect of certain private we chose this path, by consensus, deliber- the world, as opposed to monks, who did- schools opening on Sunday and women who ately if not always unquestioningly or n’t. This distinction became clearer to choose to wear veils over their faces. even happily. It’s a work in progress. It’s people who argued that actions in this I come back to a subject I tackled a also an education; it doesn’t come in a world did not specifically affect one’s lot few years ago because it’s come back, bundle for us to file away, but must be in the next; Calvinists grew particularly with something of a vengeance, or what I gone over all the time, practiced and pol- adept at this argument, making commer- fear may soon look like vengeance. And ished. We don’t own it; we make use of cial fortunes even as they crossed their this is not to imply that the subject ought it. It does not define us; we are certainly fingers about the pits of Hell. Modern to have gone away, because quite frankly not alone in taking this path, and others liberalism has developed this line of all societies, and certainly ours, need to may come to take this path who seem thinking to an extent, maintaining that talk as much and as openly as possible very different from us. church and state should be separate, and about what our values are and how we If I sound like a mystic, my apolo- that when entering public institutions acquired them, and about why we recog- gies. I’m talking about a way of life—a one’s religious beliefs should be checked nize other values as foreign and what we set of values, if you will—that I call mod- at the door. should do about that. ern and liberal. Some people say West- But many religious people (Muslims I despair at polarized debates, where ern, but that is to take Quebec’s problem are a classic example) believe that creat- an issue must be either one thing or an- and write it on a global scale: the West ing a just society is a spiritual duty, and other, either right or wrong, without any may be largely modern and liberal, but so exactly what they are expected to sense of context. Context is history, of that doesn’t define it, and to claim so is to check at that door is unclear. Moreover, course. History will remind us, if we lis- open up modern liberal values to all accu- isn’t it a little absurd to ask someone to ten, that fifty years ago Quebec was more sations aimed at the West. The West did abandon the very thing that made them or less a lip-service democracy ruled in invent a kind of democracy, one that has want to do good... in the name of doing Tammany fashion with the support of or- met with much success on the whole, but good? If a man wishes to build a shelter ganized religion and big business—all it did so as a counter to other classic for the homeless, does it matter if he is those lovely things the 60s were against Western institutions like absolutism and influenced by the Koran, Das Kapital, or —in which dissent of any significant sort fascism. The West did invent a kind of JS Woodworth’s My Neighbour? was dangerous, at least socially. History feminism—maybe not the only legitimate Increasingly, we seem to be ready to will also remind us that until twenty years kind, I don’t know—as a counter to cen- answer Yes. We are suspicious. Religious before that, women did not vote in turies of entrenched patriarchy, gross people are always out to convert people, provincial elections; they did, however, prejudice, sexual bondage and, if you go aren’t they? Let them build a homeless have the right (and still do) to wear spe- back far enough, polygamy and chattel. shelter and the next thing you know the cially concealing clothes which marked Improving on all that certainly seems like homeless are being harassed by Bible those that did so as having a religious vo- a no-brainer, which is not to say there thumpers. (Sally Ann, anyone?) Or cation and being, by implication, sexually aren’t plenty of men who believe firmly worse: fanatics are getting a foot in the off-limits. Since those days, thanks in in women’s rights but still wouldn’t want door, and if they do, it will be only a mat- large part to several gentlemen who came their spouses to beat them at golf. ter of time before there are inquisitions to power after the revolutionary election Matters get dicier when we acknowl- and witch hunts. Now, many people who of June1960, Quebec has seen its institu- edge that modern liberal values are by argue this way have seen inquisitions and tions become more democratic and open, implication secular. Probably no other witch hunts first hand; others, closer to from government itself to the broad word today provokes such polarization, home, may be remembering life under La 3 QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Grande Noirceur. But the rest of us sus- issues my passport believes? Our fear of This argument is hypocritical wherever picious people seem to be driven by fear. religious difference, and especially of the one finds it, but in Quebec it is particular- The sectarian violence that plagues the trappings of religion, has caused us to re- ly odd. It’s as if our memories did not world today makes it quite natural and treat to a position of intolerance, wherein extend back beyond June 1960. Or rather, practical to be fearful, and by and large we see all difference as a threat to what as if that revolution has been erased and we have opted to try to assuage these we claim to hold dear. This is to serious- we have come to believe that what was fears by imposing restrictions on our lib- ly undermine the values of modern liber- gained had always existed.